Conventional aircraft wings comprise a wing box with front and rear spars. Upper and lower wing covers (skins) are attached to the spars and extend between them to form the upper and lower boundaries of the wing box. Leading and trailing edge structures, such as shroud panels or D-nose covers, are typically attached to the upper and lower covers with a butt joint. The leading and trailing edges of the upper and lower covers typically have a substantially linear profile for ease of manufacture and assembly with the leading and trailing edge structures.
The trailing edge of the covers typically overhangs the rear spar. Trailing edge ribs, which support trailing edge control surfaces such as, e.g., spoilers and ailerons, are typically fastened to the covers overhangs. These fastener holes can be highly loaded due, predominantly, to high span-wise wing cover strains in the region due to wing bending. Additional loading introduced from the ribs compounds the high loads on these fastener holes. This is not a new problem but the move to greater use of composite structures (such as fibre-reinforced laminates), which are generally less tolerant to bearing stress than their metallic predecessors, means that the overhang portion of the covers at the trailing edge needs to be relatively thick to support these loads. The weight penalty of this structural build up in the region is significant.
It is therefore an object of this invention to reduce weight in the region of the wing covers trailing edge.